S.D. Youngren - Rowena 3 - Rowena Deals With Life.txt Read online

  Rowena Plays With Her Dog

  Fiction by S. D. Youngren

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Rowena squeaked Linus' latex hamburger at him. She did not let Linus play with it unsupervised because she didn't trust it, but tonight she was staying home with him. "Get it, Linus! Get it! Grrrrrrr." He pounced, and Rowena let go. The hamburger squeaked savagely as he worried it. Rowena ruffled up his fur.

  The hamburger had been a gift from Terese. "I looked all over," Terese had said, "but I just couldn't find a squeaky cup of coffee. So I got the next best thing."

  "I don't think he would like coffee anyway," Rowena had replied.

  "Not now, maybe, but just wait'll he grows up and gets sophisticated."

  "You're not going to go and get sophisticated on me, are you, Linus?" He rolled his eyes at her and she tussled with him. He let out a little yip. "There's a puppy. There's a puppy." There she was, calling him "puppy" again. "Linus! Linus!" He seemed to respond to that, but then he responded to just about everything. "Do you know you're Linus? Linus?" He abandoned the hamburger for his mistress; the toy lay upside-down on the floor, slightly torn on one side.

  Maralynne had given her a puppy present, too--a book of dog horoscopes. "I don't really know what sign he is, of course," Rowena had told Sammy. "He's supposed to be `about four months old,' but that only narrows it down to, I don't know, a field of three, I guess."

  "Maybe you're supposed to backwards-engineer it," he'd suggested. "You read the book and figure out his birthday from that."

  "And find out he was born next month."

  "Hey, nothing's perfect."

  Rowena smiled. She scooped Linus into her arms for no reason at all. Sammy was working late and couldn't even call her; he would probably work late the next night too. "He gets all the actual glory, of course," Sammy had said of his boss, "but I get to brag about it too."

  "He'll get plenty of glory from this one," Rowena had replied, "if he wins it."

  "We," Sammy had corrected her, "will win it. If there's any justice in Judge Berkeley's courtroom. And up to now there usually has been."

  "So why are you working so hard?" she'd teased him.

  "So I won't end up looking like a complete idiot for having said that, of course."

  Rowena put Linus down, reached for his ball, rolled it across the floor. She watched him dash after it, thinking, If he were a big dog, I'd have to run around with him. Of course, she wouldn't keep a big dog in her apartment. She sighed. Sammy was working on an important case, Terese had just been promoted, Lorraine down at the office had had a baby, and here she was, just . . .

  "Yeah, yeah, I know; I'm important to you," she told Linus. "But you would think that about anybody. You would. You would."

  He didn't even try to deny it. Rowena retrieved the ball and threw it towards the hallway. Her mother wanted her to marry Sammy and make him go to law school, after which she could have three or four babies and retire. Terese thought she should become a paramedic or something. Eloise thought she should take Mr. Schmed's special training course and . . . and basically stay with the firm, in one capacity or another, forever and ever. Rowena sighed again. She was pretty sure she didn't want to do that. But what did she want?

  Something poked at her feet; looking down she saw that Linus had rolled his ball back to her. "What a smart puppy you are!" she said. She would of course assume he'd done it on purpose; she saw this as a kind of duty, to tell Terese how smart her dog was and get laughed at. Not laughed at, exactly, but . . .

  She rolled the ball in another direction, and Linus charged after it. The apartment seemed awfully quiet; the telephone in particular was very still. At least, she told herself, at least she hardly ever had to work late. But . . . She could hear Linus' ball bumping against the kitchen wall, the wall she shared with the Changs, and she checked her clock. Late enough to maybe annoy somebody. She got up and fetched Linus back, pulled his tug-of-war towel from under the table. It was hardly an even battle, playing tug-of-war with a dog Linus' size, but he always acted as if he had a chance. Which he did, because of course she let him win. He dug in his feet and glared at her. She gave the towel a shake. Quiet. She wondered when Sammy would start taking her for granted. They always did--didn't they? Wasn't that how it worked, no matter what the guy had been like early on? Even a guy like Sammy, who went around being nice, who didn't try to deceive her, lie to her, take advantage of her? Would he end up ignoring or patronizing her the way all the rest of them supposedly did?

  Leaving her nobody even to him.

  Rowena let go her end of the towel, and Linus pranced off in triumph. Rowena wondered whether he would still be this playful when he grew up. If everybody would just stay the same . . . except Rowena herself . . .

  And in some respects, her mother . . .

  Rowena shook her head, picked a book up off the coffee table beside her, and dropped it onto her lap. Her mother. She had somewhat less to worry about on that front since she'd moved out--there'd even been fewer shot-in-the-dark references to chastity than she'd expected--but now that she was away from them and had a little more time she also found herself worrying; was it also true what they said about ending up, no matter how hard you tried, just like your parents?

  Rowena hoped not. She thought up all sorts of ways she couldn't possibly be--ever--like her mother. She was too smart. She was too tactful. She--

  So maybe she wouldn't be like her mother, but who was she?

  Rowena got up and fixed herself a cup of tea, Linus pouncing at her feet. "Don't you ever get tired?" she asked. Sometimes she envied him. All that energy and nothing to worry about. "Do you have any ambitions, Linus? Do you want to grow up to be a police dog or something?" He looked up at her and wagged his tail in a very un-police-dog-like manner, which was just as well. Evidently all he wanted was to be a friendly little pet.

  Rowena took her tea to the couch, Linus bounding after. She sat down, and he tried to jump up after her and missed. "Oh, Linus!" said Rowena. "Come here." She scooped him up and put him in her lap. She petted him, very careful not to spill her tea, and after a while he actually settled down and fell asleep.

  Rowena sat awhile, looking at her empty teacup and thinking. The apartment was very still, the light from her lamp a tangible substance in the air. Rowena wondered whether it mattered, what happened to her. Some aspect of her life would probably work out. Probably. Though--

  Something good could happen as easily as something bad, she told herself. But she wasn't sure she believed it.

  She looked at the clock. She ought to go to bed. On her lap Linus twitched in some kind of puppy dream. She couldn't possibly wake him. She watched him, his little paws; his mouth opened a bit and closed. "Hey," she whispered. "I have to sleep too, you know." But he was too cute to wake. Rowena smiled at him, even though it was getting later and later . . .

  The phone rang.

  Linus leaped up and so did Rowena. She ran to the phone.

  "Hello?"

  "I hope I didn't wake you," said Sammy. Rowena closed her eyes a moment. Her heart was beating.

  "No," she said. "No, you didn't."

  "Oh, good. I--I know how late it is, but we just finished and I thought . . . We're leaving in a minute but I wanted to talk to you."

  "I've wanted to talk to you," Rowena said.

  "What have you been doing?" Sammy asked.

  "Playing with the dog. I think I actually wore him out for once." Sammy laughed. "How's your case?"

  "God knows. I'm too tired to tell. I expect it'll wor
k."

  "Good."

  "Hey, look, I gotta run. I just wanted . . ." He trailed off; when he continued it was almost in a whisper. "I just wanted to hear your voice."

  Rowena closed her eyes again. She wished Sammy was there with her. She couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't sound stupid.

  She remembered Sammy telling her once, "Of course that's not stupid. This is not a stupid relationship," and she hoped he was right. She thought that maybe he was right.

  Rowena Gets Abducted By Aliens

  Fiction by S. D. Youngren

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Rowena frowned at Mr. Schmed's latest memo: "Official memos are a vital means of communication within the organization. All employees shall read official memos. W. Schmed." If she frowned hard enough, maybe she could manage not to laugh or even groan.

  "Rowena," said a voice, "you've got to save me."

  Rowena looked up. "Save you? Save you from what?"

  "My relatives." She was breathless. "They've come from the Old Country to visit."

  "Old Country?" asked Rowena. "What Old Country?" There was nothing especially foreign about Berna, and she had never mentioned any Old Country.

  "The Old Country. You've got to hide me somewhere."

  "Hide you? Berna, don't you--" But Berna gave a little scream and ran for the Ladies' Room. Rowena turned, expecting to see Eloise bearing down on her--very little else could cause that kind of flight at Rorschach & Schmed--but instead of Eloise a disordered group of four or five women charged past, chattering excitedly in a strange tongue and pointing in the direction Berna had taken.

  "What do I do?" Berna asked. Eloise had shooed the women out as "too disruptive," but Berna was not getting much work done. "They're waiting for me outside."

  "Come on," said Rowena. "They can't be that bad."

  "Easy for you to say. I bet you have a normal family." Rowena made a small choking noise, which Berna ignored. "What am I going to do?"

  "Well . . . what do they want?"

  "They want to take me out to dinner. And probably to spend the week with me. In my one-bedroom apartment."

  "Tell them you're living with a Hell's Angel."

  "Rowena!"

  "Okay, okay. I'm sorry. Uh . . . would they stay at a motel if you paid for it?"

  "That would be shirking my obligations. Anyway, they'd think I didn't like them."

  "Berna--"

  "Rowena, please. Kidnap me or something. At least come to dinner with us."

  "Dinner? Tonight? I don't know . . ."

  "Rowena! Please?"

  "What kind of food?"

  "Ethnic, I guess you'd say. From the Old Country."

  "Which is . . . ?"

  "You'll love it. It's a great restaurant; I've been there before. Look, we can put a couple of them in your car and you can follow me there."

  "Berna--"

  "Mine's too small for everybody. They probably came in a taxi. I think. If they've got a rental car--"

  "Okay, okay. Just calm down and stop trying to arrange everything. I'll come."

  "Oh, thank you! It'll be all right now--with someone else along."

  Rowena braced herself, going out the door. She made Berna go first. The foreign ladies dashed at them, clucking. Rowena was introduced to them; they kept patting her and shaking her hand. Rowena hoped they were fast eaters. Once the situation had been explained (by Berna, in whatever language the ladies spoke), the two ladies who made the most fuss over Rowena followed her to her car. She was glad to see them dutifully fasten their seat belts; at least, she thought, they would be partially restrained. "I'm sorry I don't know your language," she said, realizing the gesture was hopeless. The lady next to her--Rowena was not entirely sure who she was--smiled broadly, nodding and patting Rowena's shoulder. "Don't do that while we're moving, okay?" Rowena asked, but the request only brought on more patting. She started the car and followed Berna out of the parking lot.

  Within a few minutes Rowena seriously began to wonder whether Berna really knew where she was going, or wanted Rowena to follow her at all. She took such a twisting, convoluted path that Rowena was utterly lost. But just as she was beginning to panic Berna pulled into a parking lot. Gratefully Rowena pulled up alongside--the lot was all but empty--and got out. Then she climbed back in to dislodge one of Berna's relatives from her shoulder harness, and finally they were ready to go.

  Rowena realized she was hungry. They rounded the corner to the front of the restaurant and Rowena looked up at the sign; a smear of neon red. She couldn't make out the letters at all; they were either of a different alphabet or in a script too elaborate--or weird--to puzzle out. She tried squinting.

  "Rowena, come on." Berna was holding the door open. Rowena went inside.

  The restaurant was dark. Dark paneling, dim light . . . Rowena blinked. Somebody with an accent led them to a table and Rowena sat down, Berna on one side and on the other the lady who'd patted her all the way over and by now seemed to have adopted her; she still kept smiling and patting, patting and smiling.

  Rowena opened her menu. "Berna?" she said. "What is this?"

  "A menu." Berna managed to say amidst a volley of foreign remarks.

  "But what kind of food is it?" Rowena hadn't a clue. She still didn't know what nationality she was dealing with. "What do I order?"

  Berna jabbed a finger at one of the entries. "You'll love it."

  "But--" Rowena gave up. Her foreign lady smiled approvingly, and patted her arm.

  When the food arrived--after absolutely no further conversation in English--Rowena started hesitantly in.

  "Well?" Berna mumbled.

  "Not bad," said Rowena. She meant it, too.

  "What did I tell you?" asked Berna, before she was dragged off again into whatever language her relatives spoke. Rowena took another forkful--and caught fire.

  She dived for her water glass. "I guess I should have warned you about those peppers," Berna said. Rowena wanted to say that she hadn't seen anything that looked to her like a pepper, but she couldn't talk. She couldn't even see to give Berna a dirty look. "Sorry about that," Berna added.

  They got her more water; they got her a glass of milk. Rowena recovered, more or less. She nibbled gingerly at her remaining food. She wondered what Sammy would have done, wished he were there. Preferably instead of Berna and her relatives. Sammy would--

  She felt Berna clutch at her arm. "I have to go to the Ladies'," Berna said. "Come with me."

  "I--"

  "Bring your purse."

  "Berna--" Not that Rowena really wanted to be left alone with Berna's relatives. Berna hauled her off towards the restroom and stuffed her through the door.

  "I gotta get out of here," she said. "They're trying to arrange a marriage for me."

  "They're trying to what?"

  "There's this bozo back in the Old Country who's got, I don't know, a lot of pigs or something. They are arranging this, do you understand? Actually making arrangements."

  "Berna, this is America. They can't--"

  "I've got to get out of here." Berna went to the window and began attacking the screen. "Help me with this, will you?"

  "Berna, I still think--"

  "Oof!" Berna said, as the screen gave way. "Now give me a boost."

  "What about the check?"

  "I told you, they were going to pay it anyway. Why else would I spend an evening with them?"

  "I didn't have the impression the money--"

  "Give me a boost." Rowena bent down and grabbed Berna just above the knees, hoping no one would walk in until . . . until she was standing there alone under the semi-broken window? She tried to straighten up. They wobbled. Rowena hastily put Berna back down.

  "Rowena, hurry."

  "Wait, wait; I've got it. Here." She made a stepladder with her hands. Berna gave Rowena her foot and they hoisted her up . . .

  And out she went.

  "Now,
" said Berna's voice, "we have to get you out." Rowena could only see the top of her head.

  "Berna, I am wearing a skirt."

  "And my relatives are out there waiting for you."

  "Oh, God." Rowena looked around and located a largish waste receptacle. She dragged it over to the window, and, as it had no cover, turned it messily onto its side, scuffled her way onto it, and managed to drag herself through the window and plop down by Berna, intact but for her nylons. Smoothing down her skirt she looked around; nobody else was in sight. They went straight to Rowena's car. "What about yours?" Rowena asked.